Under the Hood - PSP Load Times

[wraggster]

Heres an excerpt

When you play a video game, you'll always have to wait for the game to load. From the moment you turn on your PlayStation or Xbox, you'll wait. Sometimes you might wait a few seconds, other times you might change the channel and watch a little golf. You'll even fruitlessly mash buttons in attempt to make the loading screens go by faster. When the game finally finishes loading, you might get to play some of it, and then you'll see another loading screen. It makes you wonder, when developers claim that a game has 40 hours worth of gameplay in it - do they factor in the time you spend staring out into space?

Recently, the PSP caught some heat for its inordinately long load times. Some users even posted videos on the Internet describing their experiences. One game in particular drew lots of ire: WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW 2006. The game takes multiple minutes to start a match, regardless of whether you want to use a custom play mode or simply want a quick match. Long load times aren't anything new; but when you combine them with portable devices, they're sure to press a few buttons (pun intended).

We're certain that most of the issues arise from the UMD media and the optical drive. The PSP has to spin up the drive, seek across the disc, and load the data. All of these actions require large amounts of time in comparison to Nintendo's cartridge based system.

In the interests of gaming science, we decided to find out how long it takes the PSP to move you from a dull glassy eyed stare to actively playing. We tried to test every game currently out for the PSP, but instead had to settle for all the games we could get our mitts on. In the end, we managed to include over 80 games in the article, which should make for a good representative batch. Our tests showed that very few games could load up in under a minute. Many games took two or even three minutes. One game took four minutes to load - WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW 2006.

Full article at Gamespot (http://uk.gamespot.com/features/6159832/index.html?sid=6159832&tag=topslot;action;3&om_act=convert&click=topslot)

[Makaveli777]

Loading times dont seem that long for me. Maybe Im patient.

[pibs]

Not to mention midnight club for the psp, wow that game takes ages to load >< they do have good graphics and all but the load times are killers

[Gene]

I really dont notice them at all.

[Broadus]

I never have any problems with loading times... Except on my PC, which would be related to my PC's abilities.
On my PS2 and PSP, I never feel like the loading times take too long. They seem reasonable to me.

[compoman386]

Quote: "Our tests showed that very few games could load up in under a minute."

Bull pies and horse feathers.
This is another Gamespot anti-psp load of BS. If the load times were as bad as they claim then I would have sold my PSP ages ago.
If you don't believe that Gamespot is anti-PSP biased, go look at their scores for your favourite PSP games, u will be surprised at how badly they score them.

[fistikuffs]

The load times are fine for me gta is pretty quick when you consider the size of it.

I reckon anyone who knows the agony of loading games on commodore 64 tape deck would have no problem with these load times. 20+ mins and then it crashes!!:eek: :eek:

[lmtlmt]

well if u dont want long load times use isos like me lol

[kayhanbakid]

i seriously thought something was wrong with my psp when i played smackdown vs. raw! load time is unbearable.

that's why i almost always play lumines. loads in less than 20 seconds i would guess.

(that's if i had to play a umd. HOMEBREW ROCKS!)

[Vega]

What the article fails to mention is that the long load times with smackdown vs raw ( 4 minute loads) occur when we try to play a season or exibition with a C.A.W (Create a Wrestler). Yes, it is unberable... It made me trade the game in... and I hope SD vs Raw 07 does not include such ridiculous loading times. ;)

[Basil Zero]

none of the games i have, i would notice, the longest would be darkstalkers, but thats hardly noticeable, and thats only in the opening of the game lol

[S34MU5]

Iso's sure do slow down load times. but i seen my mates smach down via raw we wer there for days............

[crypysmoker]

First off, GAmestop is anit everything that they cant rip people off with, and since peopel hardly ever trade in psp games because they dont give anythign for trade, they dont liek psp as much because they cant resell a game as new 50+ times.


BUt, Ive got a few.

Midnight club 3... OMG.. 2-3 minutes to load a race, but then again there are a lot of textures and models it has to load up.

Syphon filter seems liek it takes a long time to load, but once it actully gets into the game you dont notice.

Infected takes a little whiel to load but there is so much goign on its understandable.

I for one dont really mind the loading times.. BUt as for it being portable, sony should have put a little bit more memory in there for it to load the games up faster...


Theres nothign more screwed up to when your on a drive and want to play a game, and by the time you actully get into the game and start playing BOOM you are at you destination.

At the saemt iem, I think the loading times are a good thing for those moronic kids who play there psp's at school when they are tryign to learn, cuts down on the becoming more stupid by the second

[blackrave]

I don't think the loading times are so bad.
I've never tried Smackdown vs. Raw 06, and never will, mainly because of the loading, but also because 07 is almost here. But I've seen the video of it loading.

I don't think 1-2 minutes is too long for a game to load into gameplay. If others think so, I guess have good patience?

[ICE]

all the games i have, besides madden 06, load as quickly as most ps2 games. madden takes ages.......

[Poem58]

I'll deal with the load times to have these big beautiful games in my little PSP...I got sick of cart limitations making titles for GBA/DS suck because they tried to make a big game and had to code for a tiny cart leaving out textures, highly compressing audio etc....or they make the presentation look good and can't even fit collision detection routines in...

Could you imagine GTA:LCS DS? Too fit a game that big you'd lose voiceovers, graphics etc....

I like my DS for what it is....I really like my PSP...1.5 forever!

[darn02]

Tony Hawks Underground 2 Remix has a long load time too, but its not all that annoying...

what else?......Um! yeah...

Prince of Persia Revelations, takes too god damn long for its own good.... Goddamnit...

Crash Tag Team Racing takes so long to load, which doesnt bother me either cause its sh*t so i dont play it...lol

but games like tales of eternia is like bang and away you go...

But what is annoying is the load time when you go into a battle in Breath of Fire III, god i hate it but i love the game so morally i win....

[Alucard]

I know they can't do this, but it would have been a good comparison between the UMD load time and the ISO load time. It is really night and day when comparing the two.

Maybe Sony will realize this and create downloadable PSP Games in ISO formats.

[NoQuarter]

I think alot of the load times are really bad,I was downgrading a friends PSP yesterday and he had Madden in there.I couldn't believe how long it took to load.
Now my copy of tekken on the other hand(the only psp game I play)smokes when it comes to load time :)

[NeoXCS]

Games seem to load faster when you use devhook and speed it up to 333mhz since the processor can output the data being read faster. :)

[valar]

i don't notice these long load times as gamestop says.some games have brilliant graphics (ghosts'n'goblins,ridge racer,tekken) and the loading times are short.psp is a stellar device.

[NovaKane]

After my experiences with my PSP games I've decided that no matter how good a game is, if the load times are crap, I'm not buying it.

Some of the PSP games I own where loading sucks:
- Ghost in the Shell (I stopped playing it after the 2nd level)
- Gitaroo Man (this game is too short to have such long loading times)
- Burnout Legends (OMG)
- Bleach: Heat the Soul (only six characters and it still takes forever to load)

With that said I will always love my PSP, but long loading times for a portable device are very unacceptable. I think it's sad that one of questions I have to ask when considering a PSP game is, "How's the loading time?" Developers should start looking at Tekken as far as how load times should be on the PSP.

Edit: I never count loading times as far as logo/copyright screens etc. I'm talking about going from the main menu to the actual level.

[.:}<3\/!}\{:.]

hmmm....most of my games load quite fast but only mid night club let me down(probly it has loads of textures to load)

[pspuser123]

try loading one match in starwars battlefront 2
it takes for ever (but the ingame is really good)

[Adrenalin]

look at the state of PSP now! sony got carried away with their usage of a disk format, and its a matter of fact. unless the machine has incredible load times, disks just don't suit portables!

Nintendo sure knows how to own sony. n0 loading time for nintenodo portable game consoles (ds, gb, gba etc) to load some of the greatest games ever!

not only poor loading times, but crap games too.
the only thing that is ok with psp i homebrew (of which is always being fought intesly by sony- ie firmware updates) and even of that the best part is Game boy emulation LOL!

DS>PSP

Ownage!

[Mr. Shizzy]

I think most games are pretty reasonable. Yet still, others are rendered uplayable, because of horrible load times. I can't even bare to try to play The Con. Even though it's a decent game, the load times are just plain unacceptable. Sometimes, you literally watch loading screens , more than you actually play...I think disc is a better choice of format than cartrige, for obvious reasons. But only if load times can be kept to a reasonable level. (Which takes efforts on the parts of both the hardware, and software devs)